I have a S9000 which works ok, but after following these forums for awhile, it appears Epson is the printer to have. I am interested in the R2400 and I'm wondering what advantages it has over the Canon. I never print anything larger then 13x19, but I do want a printer which is of higher build quality then the Canon.

The Epson 2400 is terrific if you want to make black & white prints, with a clever driver, excellent neutrality and a very dark D-max. The provided profiles are very good. Epson also provides the broadest range of papers, and the best print longevity. On the other hand, Canon's printers are faster, with cheaper inks, and by all accounts have excellent color saturation. Epson's virtues come at a price, as both printers and inks are more expensive. You pays your money...

I have not seen any source that directly compares the D-max for Epson's K3 printers to dye-based printers on glossy papers. However, Joseph Holmes reports an L* value of 3.3 for the K3 printers on premium luster paper, corresponding to a densitometer D-max of 2.45, versus a D-max of 2.30 for Ansel Adams' selenium toned fiber based prints, Cibachromes and Lightjet prints. In View Camera magazine, Charles Cramer notes L* values for HP's dye-based Designjet 130 printer of 3 on satin paper and 2 on glossy. This suggests that the dye-based Designjet yields a slightly better D-max than the K3 printers, allowing for the fact that this is not a head-to-head comparison.Hope this helps.

I have a S9000 which works ok, but after following these forums for awhile, it appears Epson is the printer to have. I am interested in the R2400 and I'm wondering what advantages it has over the Canon. I never print anything larger then 13x19, but I do want a printer which is of higher build quality then the Canon.

Suggestions please

Rob[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=52194\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Hello Rob,

Hope you don't mind if I butt in.

I also am using a Canon dye printer at the moment (the i9950). Quite happy with it, but I am thinking of getting the R2400. It's not the build quality that bothers me with the Canon, its the fact that everybody seems to be using Epson when it comes to serious printing. A situation reflected in the almost total disregard of Canon printers when it comes to third party software manufacturers. In a discussion involving modern inkjet printing the Canon name hardly ever comes up."Left out" is the feeling I get.

The only advantage the i9950 seems to have over the R2400 is printing speed and the ability to print "better," read more saturated colours, on glossy media.

For everything else the Epson comes out on top. B&W, choice of media, permanence, third party support.

Have you seen colour output on glossy paper from the Epson? If so, is it reallythat bad? I do print quite a lot on glossy (to take advantage of the Canon's ability mainly) but would like to experiment with lustre, matte, and all the other fibre-based papers that the Epsons seem to excel at.

I have the same 'left out' feeling. I own a Canon i9100. It is fast, quiet and delivers beautiful prints. i mostly print on matte paper (Epson Archival Matte and Moab Entrada) and have custom made profiles for them.Still I'm thinking about getting an Epson, because of the third party support and because there seems to be a problem with my printing head. It looks like I have to replace my almost 3 year old printer by a new one... Canon i9950 or Epson R 2400?

Is there a comparison between the two available on-line? How slow / noisy is the Epson? (I have to do my printing in the living room with children playing around it...)

I currently own both Epson (1280, 1800, 2400 and soon 4800) and Canon (S9000, i9100, i9900) printers and I believe most sum it up correctly, the Canons are speed demons and the newer Epsons are better for longetivity. I do have a lot of family / friends tell me that the photos I gave them from my Epson 1280 have faded (all types of Epson paper) which correlates with my experience, some have lasted a few years while others have faded within a few months. All of my Canon prints fade, however it's not a concern because we give them to our customers just to show them what their projects will look like. The Canon prints do look great in the beginning, also the Canon printers are substantially faster then the Epsons, so it makes them great for a business application. All of the photographers that I know use Epson printers and I believe it's because of Epson's ability to create archival prints as well as the quality of the print (being better or equal to Canon / HP). When I started I used all HP, but then they fell off of the radar, now they are back, but I believe they are still behind Epson and Canon.

PS, One last item I would like to address. The Canon glossy prints are "glossier" then the Epson prints, but I believe only when viewed side by side.

I also am using a Canon dye printer at the moment (the i9950). Quite happy with it, but I am thinking of getting the R2400. It's not the build quality that bothers me with the Canon, its the fact that everybody seems to be using Epson when it comes to serious printing. A situation reflected in the almost total disregard of Canon printers when it comes to third party software manufacturers. In a discussion involving modern inkjet printing the Canon name hardly ever comes up."Left out" is the feeling I get.

The only advantage the i9950 seems to have over the R2400 is printing speed and the ability to print "better," read more saturated colours, on glossy media.

For everything else the Epson comes out on top. B&W, choice of media, permanence, third party support.

Have you seen colour output on glossy paper from the Epson? If so, is it reallythat bad? I do print quite a lot on glossy (to take advantage of the Canon's ability mainly) but would like to experiment with lustre, matte, and all the other fibre-based papers that the Epsons seem to excel at.

Opinions?

All the best,Ian[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53890\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

As a long-time Apple and Nikon user, I can identify with feeling left out.

That aside, I think it comes down to whether or not you're happy with the results you're getting. Changing printers requires a big investment in time as well as money, and only you can say whether or not you'll benefit from it in terms of your ability to express yourself through your prints.

If you sell your work, plan to sell your work or give away a lot of prints, archival properties may be a big deal. I do sell some prints, and I wouldn't want to sell anything printed on non-archival materials.

As far as your question about glossy prints from K3 printers, I think "that bad" is very subjective. I've generally shied away from glossy papers just because I never liked the look all that much (I've always preferred matte and lustre finishes, and this preference long predates the rise of digital capture and printing). Pete Myers' recent article about digital B&W printing piqued my interest, however, and I've recently started making prints on Pictorico Photo Gallery Hi-Gloss White Film using the Epson 2400.

Given that I've only been doing this for a very short time, my experience has been that the color prints on this "paper" are very nice, but not spectacularly better than those on Kodak's Pro Glossy or Epson's Premium Glossy. B&W images ARE pretty amazing. The richness of the blacks, the amount of detail rendered and the appearance of depth that PGHG's highly-reflective surface produces are unique in my experience. I haven't seen any other ink/paper combination that looks like this, including the prints I've made using dye-based printers. There IS some amount of gloss differential and there are various workarounds possible if that bothers you. The best advice I can give is to try to get a look at some good fine-art prints made with K3 inks and the papers that you are likely to want to use. I don't know how easy that would be to do, and store samples only go so far, but there may be no substitute for seeing with your own eyes.

I'm an amateur enthusiast, not a professional. I know a decent bit about photography and have been struggling to learn Photoshop for about a year and am finally starting to know how to accomplish what I want. I know even less about printers and papers. But I have a Canon i9100 and print on Ilford Galerie Pearl paper because I like the semigloss look. I don't like the glare of full gloss paper, nor the sort of dead, flat look of matte. I shoot with a Canon Rebel XT, so with 8 megapixels to play with my prints are generally 200 pixels per inch on 13 x 19 paper.

I've never seen a print from an Epson by a professional, so perhaps I don't know what I'm missing. As for longevity, I have prints in my office that are over a year old, and if they've faded at all it's very little. Holding a new print up to an old one I can hardly tell the difference. I'm not sure of the age, but if anyone recalls when the i9100 came out (late 2003? early 2004?) I purchased it as soon as it was shipping and my oldest prints are that old.

My i9950 is only 18 months old and still works perfectly; so I'm not complaining.Thing is, I feel limited with this printer. I have tried printing monochrome, but the results were not good. With the R2400 users report that it is a piece of cake.

Also, the canned profiles supplied by Epson are reportedly really good and only if you are extremely critical will you need to have a specific profile built. And the new K3 inkset is being lauded as a quantum leap by those in the know.

But the clincher which will make me migrate to an Epson will probably be the possiblilty of using the ImagePrint software by ColorByte.

The Epson 2400 produces very high quality prints and excfellent black and white. The main downside is that if you wish to change between matte and coated media you need to flush the ink and change a cartridge. This is somewhat costly. You would probably have the best of both worlds if you kept the Canon for doing work on coated media and used the Epson for matte in both black and white and colour. Epson's profiles are very good. For a 2400 I would test carefully wherever you can do so before buying ImagePrint. Depending on your work flow requirements you may or may not find it worthwhile.

Thanks for confirming what I have been reading on the web re the print quality with the 2400. Yes, I wish that the Epson cradle had an extra slot, but I will probably take your advice and hang on to the Canon until I feel completely comfortable with the Epson quirks.

In fact, the 2400 is not yet on the list of compatible printers in ImagePrint, but it will certainly make the grade before any Canon!

I am in a sort of hurry to decide because I will be in Paris next week and it is a good opportunity for me to pick up the printer from there. The R2400 is only available on order here in Malta, and I won't even tell you how much it would cost!